The Follies

The headline on Friday's guest column in Lockeland proclaims that "Powerful Interests Push Young People Toward Socialism." You might be wondering about all the socialism rampant in the land. It turns out it can be traced back to the brainwashing of our youth which is carried out in several nefarious ways.

There are the public school teachers who were trained by the commie academics to indoctrinate our youth. That means "from kindergarten through college, students are exposed to either an undercurrent or an open hostility toward capitalism and a positive attitude toward socialism."

Then there's Hollywood and the entertainment industry of course, where "even children's cartoon shows have portrayed corporations as evil." Surely you remember watching Tom and Jerry talking about Enron.

Then there's the news media, where "many of the editorial pages of newspapers are openly liberal." Remember anything liberal is by definition socialist.

And reporters don't stop there, they "join with the academia and the entertainment industry in presenting a negative portrayal of America and lauding activist actors and entertainers."

And they make billions of dollars doing it. That's socialism for you, accumulating all that private wealth.

Last but not least there's the legal community "who join in to prove that our system of laws is unfair and that we need a move to a government-controlled society." Lawyers who operate under our system of laws trying to prove our laws are unfair? Tort reform to save America from the Marxists.

One thing is pretty clear from the column. You can't go anywhere without being subject to the trickiness of those dangerous and clever socialists. They run our schools, our movies, our courts. Be careful out there. And check behind every tree. And for heaven's sakes, don't watch the cartoon channel.

Civitas poll unreported fun facts

The folks over at Civitas released their July poll this week and as usual, it contains findings not highlighted in their press releases. The N&O did report one of them, that 46 percent of North Carolina voters still have a favorable opinion of President Obama while 43 percent view him unfavorably.

But there are plenty of other nuggets of bad news for the Right in their own poll. Forty-seven percent of voters blame former President George W. Bush for the current economic problems while just 18 percent blame Obama.

Twenty-six percent of voters believe that things are headed in the right direction in North Carolina while 15 percent things have gotten off on the wrong track and 44 percent were recorded as believing things were the same, whatever that means. By a small margin people have an unfavorable opinion of the tea party movement while 94 percent of voters are not active in the tea parties.

The most interestingly worded question was one that asked if people believe that "stalling economic recovery will lead to another recession." They do of course, and it makes you wonder if the next question would be "do you believe that more people losing their jobs will lead to higher unemployment," but alas it was not asked.

If you are keeping score at home, here are some of the headlines from the July Civitas Poll.

"North Carolina voters continue to have a favorable view of Barack Obama, blame George W. Bush for our current economic problems, and believe North Carolina is headed in the right direction."

Limbaugh's lunacy

Rush Limbaugh doesn't usually make Friday Follies because once you start talking about the ridiculous things he says every day, there wouldn't be room for anything else.

But as Media Matters reports, he outdid himself this week, ranting about how liberals want to relegate the private sector into supporting government, which somehow led him to say this about nonprofits.

"Non-profits siphon contributions, as their salaries and so forth, and think of themselves as good people, charitable people. I mean, these people are rapists, in terms of finance and economy."

Close the food bank, the health clinics and the homeless shelters. They are apparently just leeches on the economy we can and should do without.